• Thursday, February 7th at 8:00 P.M.(Reading)

Stephen Graham Jones will read in Memorial Hall at the University of Massachusetts as part of the M.F.A. Program's Visiting Writer Series.   Jones’ most recent novel is Demon Theory.   Other works include The Fast Red Road, All the Beautiful Sinners, The Bird is Gone, & Bleed Into Me: A Book of Stories.   He’s been an NEA Fellow, a Texas Writers League Fellow, a Texas Monthly Book Club Selection, & has won the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction & the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award for Fiction.   His short fiction has been published everywhere from Writing Fiction to The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror.

• Sunday, February 10th at 3:00 P.M.(Poetry reading)

“jubilat/Jones Reading Series”   Laura Solomon & Dorothea Lasky, will read at the Jones Library in Amherst.   Solomon has a book of poetry, Bivouac, & two chapbooks, Letters by which Sisters Will Know Brothers &, most recently, Blue & Red Things.   She is the co-translator of Haiku of Stones / Haiku des Pierres by Jacques Poullaouec.   Lasky is the author of three chapbooks: The Hatmaker's Wife, Art, & Alphabets & Portraits, as well as recent collection, AWE.   Her poems have appeared in jubilat, Crowd, 6x6, Boston Review, Delmar, & Carve, among others.

The reading will be followed by a Q&A.   For more information: jubilat.org

• Friday, February 15th at 8:00 P.M.(Reading)

“Live Lit”   Students in the M.F.A. Program at the University of Massachusetts will read from their recent work.   Evenings usually include a mix of poetry & fiction.   Tonight’s readers are Jeannie Hoag, Sara Jaffe, & Heather Christle.

• Sunday, February 17th at 4:00 P.M.(Reading)

Betsy Hartmann will read from her new novel, Deadly Election.   Of it, Michael Klare says, “Betsy Hartmann has taken our darkest fears of the Bush administration & carried them one terrifying step further: she’s written a highly plausible thriller about a government conspiracy to postpone the 2008 elections.   An electrifying novel that’s not be missed!”   Hartmann is author of another novel, The Truth about Fire, as well as the feminist classic, Reproductive Rights & Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control.   She is co-author of A Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh Village & co-editor of the anthology, Making Threats: Biofears & Environmental Anxieties.   Hartmann teaches & directs the Population & Development Program at Hampshire College.

• Thursday, February 21st at 6:00 P.M.(Book launch party)

Join Shutesbury resident Peggy Woods in celebrating the publication of her first novel, Spinning Will.   Woods is Assistant Director of the University of Massachusetts Writing Program.  

• Thursday, February 28th at 8:00 P.M.(Reading)

Canceled due to illness Emily Barton will read as part of the Amherst College Writing Center's Visiting Writers Series.   Barton's fiction has appeared in Story, American Short Fiction, & Conjunctions.   Her first novel, The Testament of Yves Gundron, called “blessedly post-ironic, engaging, & heartfelt” by Thomas Pynchon, won the Bard Fiction Prize & was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.   Her most recent novel, Brookland, is the tale of sisters who run a gin distillery in late eighteenth-century Brooklyn.   Barton is the recipient of a 2006 artist's grant from the National Endowment for the Arts & a 2006 fellowship from the Guggenheim.  

• Thursday, February 28th at 8:00 P.M.

"Anne Halley Poetry Prize Reading"   Ralph Black, winner of the 4th annual Anne Halley Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Massachussetts Review, will read in the University Gallery, Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts.     Black’s poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Gettysburgh Review, Chelsea, Georgia Review, & Pequod.   He is author of a volume of poetry, Turning over the Earth, & is winner of the Chelsea Poetry Award & the Academy of American Poets Prize.

The Anne Halley Poetry Prize is named in memorial for Anne Halley, to honor her 25 years of work as poetry co-editor of the Massachusetts Review as well as her work as a poet & writer.   Her last collection of poetry, Rumors of the Turning Wheel, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2003.

• Friday, Feburary 29th at 5:00 P.M.(Book launch party)

Join us in celebrating the publication of two new books by area music professors!   Klára Móricz, who teaches at Amherst College, is author of Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Music, a study of Ernst Bloch, Arnold Schoenberg, among others, in the context of emerging Jewish nationalism, widespread racial theories, & utopian tendencies in modernist art & twentieth–century politics.   (Read more!)   Hampshire College professor, Rebecca Miller is author of Carriacou String Band Serenade: Performing Identity in the Eastern Caribbean, a study of the Grenandan island Carriacou's annual Parang Festival, which features concerts, performances of local quadrille dance, Hosannah band (a cappella singing) competitions, & the climactic string band competition.   (Read more!)

• Friday, Feburary 29th at 8:00 P.M.(Reading)

“Live Lit”   Students in the M.F.A. Program at the University of Massachusetts will read from their recent work.   Evenings usually include a mix of poetry & fiction.   Tonight’s readers are Ata Moharreri, Ari Feld, Madeline Ffitch, Boomer Pinches & Phil Thompson.